Takis

Born 1925, Athens. Died 2019

Takis made his first sculptures in 1946 from clay and from 1948-53 began to carve in wood.

These wooden sculptures were of the human figure and became more abstract. In 1954 he began a series entitled Signals. Takis has described how the idea for the series developed from signals at a railway station in Calais:

'When I came back to Paris I started making a sort of imitation of those signals, and as I used thin wires as bodies to hold the signals, accidentally they started moving, and I thought it very fascinating'. From these works developed the sculptures using magnetic and electrical forces with which he dreamt of making 'a perpetual motion machine with magnets'.

Prototype